Poland has established a Memorial Day for the “victims of the OUN and UPA genocide”

Poland has established a Memorial Day for the "victims of the OUN and UPA genocide"

According to Gordonua, the Polish Sejm has passed a law designating July 11 as a Memorial Day for Poles who died as a result of the “genocide” committed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The parliament’s press service announced this on Facebook on June 4.

The document states that between 1939 and 1946, members of the OUN and UPA, as well as other Ukrainian formations, killed over 100,000 Poles and forced a similar number to flee from territories that were then part of Poland. The peak of the killings occurred in the summer of 1943, which is why July 11 was chosen as a symbolic date, the release notes.

“The martyrdom suffered due to belonging to the Polish nation deserves to be remembered through a day annually honored by the Polish state, paid for by these victims,” the Sejm press service quotes the law as saying.

Context

The Volyn tragedy (referred to in Polish historiography as the Volhynia massacre) was a series of mutual ethnic cleansings that took place during World War II in the Volyn region. On one side was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and on the other, the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and other Polish formations. The exact number of victims on both sides is unknown. Estimates suggest that between 25,000 and 100,000 Poles were killed, along with several thousand to up to 24,000 Ukrainians.

In 2016, the Polish Sejm recognized the Volyn tragedy as a genocide and established July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against citizens of the Second Polish Republic. In response, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine issued a statement calling the Sejm’s decision a misinterpretation of the tragic events.

In 2017, following the destruction and damage of Ukrainian monuments in Poland, Ukraine introduced a moratorium on the exhumation of Polish graves on its territory. This issue has remained a subject of discussion between the two countries for years.

Poland has since stated that the issue of Polish exhumations would be addressed during negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU. In 2025, exhumation works related to the Volyn tragedy resumed and were carried out in Ternopil Oblast in April and May. Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture stated that “this history could become the newest page in a shared interpretation of the past.”